Hearest thou voices on the shore,
That our ears perceive no more,
Deafened by the cataract's roar?

O, thou child of many prayers!

Life hath quicksands, Life hath snares!
Care and age come unawares !

Like the swell of some sweet tune,
Morning rises into noon,

May glides onward into June.

Childhood is the bough, where slumbered
Birds and blossom many-numbered; -
Age, that bough with snows encumbered.

Gather, then, each flower that grows,
When the young heart overflows,
To embalm that tent of snows.

Bear a lily in thy hand;

Gates of brass cannot withstand
One touch of that magic wand.

Bear through sorrow, wrong, and ruth,
In thy heart the dew of youth,
On thy lips the smile of truth.

O, that dew, like balm, shall steal

Into wounds, that cannot heal,
Even as sleep our eyes doth seal;

And that smile, like sunshine, dart

Into many a sunless heart,
For a smile of God thou art.

THE GOLDEN MILESTONE.

BY LONGFELLOW.

LEAFLESS are the trees; their purple branches Spread themselves abroad like reefs of coral, Rising silent

In the Red Sea of the winter sunset.

From the hundred chimneys of the village,
Like the Afreet in the Arabian story,

Smoky columns

Tower aloft into the air of amber.

At the window winks the flickering firelight;
Here and there the lamps of evening glimmer,
Social watch-fires

Answering one another through the darkness.

On the hearth the lighted logs are glowing,
And like Ariel in the cloven pine-tree,

For its freedom

Groans and sighs the air imprisoned in them.

By the fireside there are old men seated,
Seeing ruined cities in the ashes,

Asking sadly

Of the Past what it can ne'er restore them.

By the fireside there are youthful dreamers,
Building castles fair, with stately stairways,
Asking blindly

Of the future what it cannot give them.

By the fireside tragedies are acted,

In whose scenes appear two actors only,—
Wife and husband,

And above them God the sole spectator.

By the fireside there are peace and comfort,
Wives and children, with fair, thoughtful faces,
Waiting, watching

For a well-known footstep in the passage.

Each man's chimney is his Golden Milestone;
Is the central point, from which he measures
Every distance

Through the gateways of the world around him.

In his farthest wanderings still he sees it;
Hears the talking flame, the answering night-wind,
As he heard them

When he sat with those who were, but are not.

Happy he whom neither wealth nor fashion,
Nor the march of the encroaching city,

Drives an exile

From the hearth of his ancestral homestead.

Waiting, Watching"

From the painting by G. Becker